On Thin Ice
by Eevee
Summary: On manly friendship and unintended proposals (the figure skating AU nobody asked for)


This was the troubling truth of the current situation: Shibuya Yuri's life had changed utterly, entirely, the day Wolfram Bielefeld had shown up at his doorstep and told him in no uncertain terms that after desecrating his routine like that, he had _better_ go on and win the gold at the next Grand Prix or so God help him, Yuri would _never_ be forgiven.

You'd think that all things that could be said about Wolfram Bielefeld were already commonly known. His technical skills, his ingenius choreographies, his brash confidence, his family history of a mother and two older brothers all world-class athletes in ice-related sports, his international career in full bloom while Yuri was still struggling to place in domestic competitions -

Wolfram Bielefeld was so, so far away from an average, middle-class guy from Saitama who had gotten into figure skating because his mother liked putting him in cute costumes. And oh, the one time they had shared a rink had been resounding evidence of how Wolfram Bielefeld belonged in another world than the one Shibuya Yuri lived in. Was it a wonder, any wonder at all, that Shibuya Yuri's average, middle-class life had been turned upside down the day Wolfram Bielefeld dragged him off to the rink demanding to see which jumps he could land?

Wolfram left his own career hanging to pull Yuri along, spent every day barking orders at him, picking apart his moves to tell him what to do better, ate his mother's curry and somehow, he had lifted Yuri up to a place where he could suddenly see his most secret dreams. And how can you _tell_ a person like Wolfram Bielefeld that he transformed your life, how can mere words make him understand how much that means to you?

The one thing no-one had ever mentioned about Wolfram Bielefeld was his lacking appreciation of delicacy.

"Well, the wedding is obviously off the table until he can show that he is capable of winning gold in the top international competitions."

"Wait - "

"That is certainly a harsh condition - "

"It's not like that," Yuri interrupted and knew that his smile likely wasn't coming across as calm and in control. "It's symbolic. Like, round and golden, it's a charm for a gold medal, see?"

Mackenzie Henrich from CBC looked between them with a mildly confused expression.

"Yes," Wolfram continued after a brief pause, "but I have full confidence that Yuri will be able to do it. I know that he can come across like a hopeless wimp at times, but the fact that he is at all qualified for Grand Prix should be evidence enough that he has what takes to win and make good on his proposal."

"Please don't make that sort of jokes -" he reached across Wolfram to pull down the gesticulating hand bearing a ring so new and well-polished that the shine caught in Yuri's eyes every time he looked at him. Only too late did he realise that the hand he'd used to stop Wolfram from waving it in front of the camera was the one that carried his own matching piece. He yanked them both down and it probably wasn't at all subtle.

Wolfram turned to glare at him. "I'm not! As I was saying…"

The rest of that sentence was lost to Yuri when he realised that he was still holding onto Wolfram's hand, as if he hadn't been giving people ideas enough with his ill-chosen attempt at showing Wolfram his gratitude and his ambition both in a single symbolic act.

In the beginning, he had thought the shudders he felt every time he the polished gold caught his eyes was in the comfort of knowing that the bond they shared had been finalised as something tangible, something _meaningful_ , and that Wolfram had understood his feelings. Only after people started wishing him luck had he realised that those shudders must have been the warning bells going off about his terrible, terrible mistake.

Well, not _all_ terrible things had come out of it. He'd gotten to talk to Conrad Weller, hadn't _that_ been a dream from his days of middle school hockey. Conrad Weller had been just as charming and friendly on the phone as he'd seemed in all his interviews, and he had been so _nice_ that Yuri had ended up spilling what seemed like half his life story to him, while Conrad Weller - _Conrad Weller_ \- said that he thought it was more admirable to stand up for justice than to play as a pro.

"Besides," he'd laughed, "if you hadn't gone back to figure skating, you'd never have become part of our family like this!"

"Yeah, part of your family," Yuri had parroted and felt his heart glow at the thought of being _family_ with Conrad Weller, before it all caught up with him again, "I mean, no! I mean, please don't make jokes about that, Wolf's already scary enough with how he really treats it all seriously and I meant it as a good luck charm and- "

And that was the point Wolfram had come back into the room, demanded to know why he _still_ was on the phone with Conrad, and jealously ended the call with a demand that he keep his sweaty, hockey-playing paws off his fiancé. And as Wolfram had followed it up with a furiously typed text, Yuri hadn't been able to take his eyes off the ring on Wolfram's hand.

"Okay," that was what Wolfram had said when Yuri tried to explain it. He'd lifted his hand after Yuri slipped on the ring, and his expression had been one Yuri had never seen on his face before, and hadn't known how to interpret; he'd had to rely on Wolfram's words, even as he was contiunally learning that Wolfram Bielefeld's words often contradicted the rest of him. _Okay_ he'd said, and when Yuri pulled out the other ring to put it on, Wolfram had plucked it out of his fingers and done it for him.

How strange, that someone whose voice was so piercing whenever Yuri wasn't performing at peak could hold his hand so softly, too. Yuri had spent the first three days getting used to the feeling of unyielding metal, and then it had stopped being a reminder about what Wolfram meant to him, and instead become the most disastrous misunderstanding.

Things were rapidly spinning out of control, and any attempts at limiting the damage were proving to be disenhearteningly unhelpful.

"It's a token of our companionship," he told Svenja Althaus from ZDF, "as _athlete and coach_. That's a kind of relationship that's very intimate, and - "

As Yuri stopped talking to envision the consequences of his choice of adjective, Svenja Althaus saw her chance and took it. "And do you think that your _intimate relationship_ is a problem for your professional one?"

"Ganz und gar nicht," said Wolfram, and even though Yuri didn't understand a single word of that sentence, he was absolutely certain that it wasn't something boding well for him.

"It's the same thing - what I meant is like _emotionally_ intimate to work together that way."

There was that now familiar beat where Wolfram and the reporter both looked at him in vague confusion, and then it took the unexpected turn of Wolfram continuing the interview in German, and Yuri could only gape in helpless witness and flinch a little every time he heard his name mentioned with that lowered vowel that Wolfram used whenever he said it in German but not in English. He had tried to stop his imagination from elaborating translations; he hadn't had the guts to look up any online news later in fear of seeing something in English or Japanese reporting on whatever it had been Wolfram told ZDF.

Gwendal Voltaire had shown up in person, because of course he'd be competing at the Rostelecom Cup. Wolfram had been off trying to be polite to his partner, who apparently apparently was scary enough to make even he come back twitchy from the encounter even as he somehow wasn't at all intimidated by his oldest brother's raging heights and icy eyes.

Of course, if Yuri's own brother was any indication, it might just be that Gwendal Voltaire was trying to make up for the middle brother's concerningly open-minded reaction. He'd yanked Yuri into a somewhat secluded corner and towered over him with a mien that must've taken years of practice.

"What do you want from him?"

"Whuh?" said Yuri, feeling his command of the English language figuratively trickling down the inside of of his leg under the weight of Gwendal Voltaire's glare.

"Wolfram. What do you want from him."

"Coach," Yuri croaked.

Gwendal Voltaire's face somehow turned even icier. "If this is some attempt at getting out of properly compensating him for the _athletic and professional losses_ he is suffering from sitting out a full season in order to mentor you -"

"But-"

"I don't know what you did to talk Wolfram into this; he insists he did so on his own volition, which is clearly nonsense. You've given the impression of being an honests man, but it seems you are set on exploiting some weakness of his that I never knew off, and this kind of manipulation of people too naive to consider ill intentions in others-"

"No, I-"

"I know you've spoken to Conrad and that he treated this with his usual _laissez-faire_ , but I hope you realise that I will not sit by and let Wolfram's idiocy ruin his most important-"

"You shouldn't talk down on him like that."

" _Excuse me_?!"

Gwendal Voltaire seemed to be as surprised at the interruption as Yuri probably should've been, but common sense and professional respect and all fear for his life had abandoned him, replaced by cold anger at how Wolfram's brother was going on about this.

"Wolf's an adult. It was his decision to be my coach - I never asked him to do it. I'd never even spoken to him before he saw that video. I don't think I've ever met a person with so much integrity as him. He's fully aware of the consequences, and he doesn't think of them as losses. As his brother, you should respect that."

Gwendal Voltaire's eyes had widened in surprise, and the grip on Yuri's upper arm was no longer bruising. Yuri merely kept his stare fixed on his senior's face, until Wolfram's brother seemed to find his footing again. But his face was no longer set in that stony anger.

"And you? Do _you_ think it's right for an athlete of Wolfram's calibre to put his career on hold like this?"

Yuri shook his head. "I'm being selfish. If a person like Wolf is offering to help me, then I'm not going to refuse it out of modesty."

"And this?"

Yuri found his right hand held up in front of his face, and the ring was solid on his hand and heavy like their vow, and the fact that Gwendal Voltaire probably could shatter his wrist one-handed didn't at all feel like a threat as Yuri looked up to meet his eyes again.

"That's the promise between us."

Wolfram's brother was quiet for a long while, and then he released Yuri's hand.

"I'll take your advice then, Yuri Shibuya. Mind that you make his decisions worth it."

And then he jumped at Anissina Karbelnikov slamming the door open to bellow his name, and Yuri wondered if Gwendal Voltaire really wasn't as scary as he looked, at all.

That was, of course, until Denis Vassiliev from Match TV wanted to know what Gwendal thought of his brother's _relations_ with Yuri Shibuya, and Gwendal Voltaire frankly answered that he hoped Yuri Shibuya would continue his promising improvements in order to be on pair with the rest of the family while Shibuya Yuri buried his face in his hands and tried tried tried to convince himself that that didn't just happen.

"It's - it's like a badge, to show that we're teammates?" he tried, and Jan Koudelka from Eurosport was giving him that regretably familiar look.

"Are you saying that you and Bielefeld will be stepping away from the singles competitions and look towards pair skating?"

"No! No, I meant that, um…"

Once upon a time, back when reporters had asked him about stuff like his performances and his routines and his feelings about his inevitable failures, Yuri had been capable of giving completely coherent interviews without Wolfram Bielefeld around to give people the wrong idea.

"Wolfram and I, we're not like _that_ ," he intoned, and stared Sebastian Bresadole from Sky Italia straight into his eyes, "it's not just - I mean, when you say 'friends', that's…" he knew he was floundering, and pushed through on a desperate hope that his words would make sense _this_ time around. "It's true, we're not just friends. We're… we're something _transcendental_."

There was another pregnant pause, and then Sebastian Bresadola from Sky Italia carefully re-phrased his question. "So what is the reason you chose to wear matching rings?"

Yuri carefully re-phrased his answer. "…it's like, to show that a coach and an athlete need to play on the same team?"

"Am I understanding you correctly that you mean that it is the, um, sexual preference that needs to…"

Only five years worth of experience kept Yuri from crumbling to the floor.

"It's a good luck charm," he said very thinly when Takanashi-san from NHK later asked him on behalf of the Japanese fans watching, "it's a token of appreciation of the work that we have done together. Please don't listen to my mother."


End file.
